How to have your cake and eat it too with the new Instagram algorithm rules for 2018

Facebook’s changes to the Instagram 2018 algorithm

The intent this year is to make the Instagram experience more “organic” while likely also killing off bots & pods.

As a result many of the standard methods to gain post engagement that were used in 2017 either no longer work or worse have the opposite effect reducing visibility or potentially end up shadow-banning an account.

So just to annoy you New for 2018, here are the main points that have been noted so far this year.

1) Initial post.

A new post is shown to just 10% of your followers
if the post engagement is good then it is shown to the rest.

2) Engagement.

To count as engagement a comment on your post needs to have four (4) or more words in it.

Simple likes do not count towards engagement

Comments with just emoji do not count towards engagement

Short comments of 3 words or less do not count towards engagement

3) Hashtags.
Are very important but

carefully crafted five or six hashtags is about the new safe limit

maxing out or stuffing posts with a large numbers of hashtags now flags the post as a spam post and visibility drops

using the same hashtags over and over in multiple posts can end up flagging them all as spam posts and may end up shadow-banning the account

Hashtags are now only valid in the original post caption field,
as of 2018 hashtags placed in the first post comment no longer count and will not show up in searches.

4) Captions

craft the caption carefully and do not try to edit once posted.

editing or altering a post after the initial posting will reduce the posts visibility
the more you try to tweak it the less visibility the post gets.

5) Response to comments
posts are no longer fire and forget!

You have 1 hour to respond to any comments on your post or its visibility level starts to drop.

6) stay away from pods

new 2018 algorithm is targeting pods and all members can end up shadow-banned.

Really good TED talk on why we waste huge amounts of our limited free time on the web.

Doing thing like S&M (Social Media) that actually makes people less than happy.

Surprising or not the tech wizard from silly valley including the creators of the ipad drastically restrict their kids access to tech.

And some innovative companies in the EU that actively prevent people from accessing work after 6pm or in Germany a car manufacturer automatically deleting emails sent to employees on vacation.(if you are on vacation you are on vacation, no work and nothing piles up waiting for your return)

Time wasting Social Media is not good for your health.SoTurn off, Sign off, Log out and get a hobby instead.